In the Wake of the War

Chapter-28

Vrishaketu rushed out of Uttara's quarters, his eyes stinging.

This had been a bad idea.

He had agreed to talk to Prince Arjun after Uttara's constant badgering and begging and his desire to not let his new friend down, but he clearly should not have agreed.

He--he had talked so much! Too much! It was...not right! It was.... strange and improper and--and unacceptable!

And he had not been stopped! He so wished that he had been stopped before he had hurt himself upon coming to the realisation of what exactly he was saying.

He went to his mother's quarters to vent but she was not there.

"Where is the Queen?" He asked the guards.

"I'm not certain but most likely in the Widow's Wing, Your highness." came the answer.

Vrishaketu barely stopped himself from screaming out loud. That was the one place in the Palace he wasn't allowed to enter except in life threatening circumstances.

And he really needed to see his mother. To see that someone... someone he loved was still alive, still there with him, that everyone he could speak about were not ghosts.

His feelings bubbled and frothed inside him and he could not identify his emotions clearly.

He could not believe that Rajkumar Arjun had just let him keep talking! He had spilled his guts in front of a stranger, someone who was just barely better than an enemy, and the man had just let him go on! Even a person with the tiniest brain should have known that no one would want to speak the way he had with a person of such description and any decent person would have... made--made him stop before he made a fool of himself! Not Rajkumar Arjun apparently!

A part of him that sounded vaguely like his mother asked the rest of him what exactly the man had been supposed to do to stop him from talking of his own free will, but that was neither here nor there. He could have tried! 

The man had been content to sit and listen to him making a fool of himself!

He stomped away towards his grandparents' chambers, knowing that was at least somewhere  he could always find some solace(and perhaps some undesired wisdom).

His eyes burned with the effort of holding back tears. He raised his hands to quickly rub at his eyes.

And then due to his lack of attention, he collided into someone. A woman.

Really, he needed to stop knocking into women. And women also needed to stop knocking into him. (Though he would admit that this was more his fault that hers given that he was sort of.... meandering about).

He didn't pay much attention to her given how embarrassed he was and the first thing that registered was that she was middle aged, so she might be one of his Kuru Kakis.

"I'm sorry kaki--" he started before getting caught completely off guard by the pink sari.

He couldn't believe that wasn't the first thing he had noticed--a coloured sari whereas all the women he loved were in white. Just spoke of the appalling state he was in.

It was the Empress.

He blinked.

Not another one.

"I am sorry, Samrangi." He said stiffly, wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible.

"No it's alright." The woman said. "You look lost."

"I know my way perfectly well, thank you."

She only raised her eyebrows.

"That is not what I meant."